Tom Clements

Reduced Expectations: the political and institutional challenges of REDD+

Development and environmental policies in developing countries are often based on narratives that provide an argument for a particular action or intervention based on a simplification of the world’s complexity (Hirschman, 1968; Roe, 1991). Strong narratives can become convincing arguments for change, particularly when supported by powerful agencies such as national governments, donors and international organizations, and can lead to blueprints for action that may or may not be based on effective implementation elsewhere. However, history tells us that great ideas designed to improve human societies can sometimes fail with startling results (Scott, 1998). Great ideas are not necessarily doomed to failure but they should avoid unduly simplifying the social, economic, political and institutional complexity of the problem. Since the Bali conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2007 the principle of providing financial incentives to developing countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) has gained widespread acceptance in international policy. REDD is now followed by a ‘+’, which includes conservation, in protected areas or indigenous reserves for example, sustainable management of forests, such as forest certification, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks through reforestation and regeneration. REDD+ is based on findings that deforestation and forest degradation, principally in the tropics, are estimated to cause 12–15% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (van der Werf et al., 2009). This is so significant that REDD+ is necessary if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change (Eliasch, 2008). REDD+ is based on the assumption that forests, and the environmental services they provide, are undervalued financially compared to alternatives and hence ‘all’ that is required is to correct for these market externalities. REDD+ is a type of payment for ecosystem service because financial incentives will be conditional upon achieving environmental outcomes. The logic builds on the documented problems with integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), which promised both conservation and poverty reduction but failed to make benefits conditional on conservation outcomes. REDD+ is highly attractive to policy makers because economic analyses have shown that it is a cheap way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with limiting or capturing industrial emissions (Eliasch, 2008), and it could simultaneously mitigate climate change, enhance conservation and promote financial transfers to some of the poorest countries and their peoples. What is new about REDD+ compared with previous forest conservation policies? Firstly, the scale of finance is significant. In 2008 annual donor aid for biodiversity conservation and biodiversity and development projects was USD 1.35 billion, i.e. , 1% of total aid (D.C. Miller, pers. comm.). Financing needs for REDD+ for 2010–2015 are estimated at EUR 15–25 billion and on 27 May 2010 in Oslo developed countries made an initial commitment of USD 4 billion for 2010–2012. Secondly, REDD+ is built on performance-based incentives, marking a significant departure from previous project-based grants and potentially making assessment of impacts much easier. Thirdly, these incentives are supposed to be sustained, again marking a departure from assumptions that short-term project grants can lead to long-term conservation outcomes. Finally, REDD+ promises to operate at national and, as appropriate, sub-national scales, which is far more ambitious than previous programmes. Although the level of finance and the conditions attached to it are new, the approach to implementation of REDD+ is not: it will probably involve a mixture of familiar strategies. This is appropriate because policy reforms and the establishment of forest management institutions can take decades and are already underway in most countries; thus implementation problems may already be well-known. Protected areas contain c. 20% of tropical forest carbon and are undergoing significant rates of deforestation, even if the rates are lower than in unprotected areas. Scharlemann et al. (2010) estimate that, under REDD+, protected areas could receive an additional USD 6.2–7.4 billion annually, or . 1.5 times their current budgets, which are widely acknowledged to be inadequate. Similarly, Sandbrook et al. (2010) recognize the importance of local people in REDD+ strategies through existing decentralized forest management arrangements. National REDD+ strategies can adopt these established instruments, as Burgess et al. (2010) discuss for Tanzania, providing a source of increased finance to scale-up their implementation and improve effectiveness. Despite this optimism, the political and institutional challenges for implementation of REDD+ are substantial. Here I raise five key concerns:

Impact of payments for environmental services and protected areas on local livelihoods and forest conservation in northern Cambodia.

The potential impacts of payments for environmental services (PES) and protected areas (PAs) on environmental outcomes and local livelihoods in developing countries are contentious and have been widely debated. The available evidence is sparse, with few rigorous evaluations of the environmental and social impacts of PAs and particularly of PES. We measured the impacts on forests and human well-being of three different PES programs instituted within two PAs in northern Cambodia, using a panel of intervention villages and matched controls. Both PES and PAs delivered additional environmental outcomes relative to the counterfactual: reducing deforestation rates significantly relative to controls. PAs increased security of access to land and forest resources for local households, benefiting forest resource users but restricting households’ ability to expand and diversify their agriculture. The impacts of PES on household well-being were related to the magnitude of the payments provided. The two higher paying market-linked PES programs had significant positive impacts, whereas a lower paying program that targeted biodiversity protection had no detectable effect on livelihoods, despite its positive environmental outcomes. Households that signed up for the higher paying PES programs, however, typically needed more capital assets; hence, they were less poor and more food secure than other villagers. Therefore, whereas the impacts of PAs on household well-being were limited overall and varied between livelihood strategies, the PES programs had significant positive impacts on livelihoods for those that could afford to participate. Our results are consistent with theories that PES, when designed appropriately, can be a powerful new tool for delivering conservation goals whilst benefiting local people. El Impacto de los Pagos por Servicios Ambientales y Áreas Protegidas sobre la Subsistencia Local y la Conservación del Bosque en el Norte de Camboya Resumen Los impactos potenciales de los pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA) y áreas protegidas (APs) sobre los resultados ambientales y las subsistencias locales en los países en desarrollo son polémicos y se han debatido ampliamente. La evidencia disponible es escasa; ha habido pocas evaluaciones rigurosas de los impactos ambientales y sociales de las APs y particularmente los PSA. Medimos el impacto sobre los bosques y el bienestar humano en tres diferentes programas de PSA que se llevan a cabo dentro de dos APs en el norte de Camboya usando un panel de aldeas de intervención y controles emparejados. Tanto los PSA como las APs brindaron resultados ambientales adicionales en relación a los contrafácticos, esto quiere decir que redujeron las tasas de deforestación significativamente en relación a los controles. Las áreas protegidas incrementaron el acceso seguro a los recursos del suelo y el bosque para las viviendas locales, beneficiando a los usuarios de los recursos del bosque pero restringiendo la habilidad de las viviendas para expandirse y diversificar su agricultura. Los impactos de los pagos por servicios ambientales sobre el bienestar de las viviendas estuvieron relacionados con la magnitud de los pagos proporcionados. Los dos programas de PSA de mayor paga y con conexión al mercado tuvieron impactos positivos significativos, mientras que un programa de menor paga con el objetivo de proteger a la biodiversidad no tuvo un efecto detectable sobre las viviendas, a pesar de sus resultados ambientales positivos. Las viviendas que se inscribieron a los programas de PSA con mayor paga, sin embargo, necesitaban típicamente más bienes capitales, por lo que eran menos pobres y tenían mayor seguridad alimentaria que otros aldeanos. Por esto, mientras los impactos de las APs sobre el bienestar de las viviendas fueron limitados en general y variaron dependiendo de las estrategias de subsistencia, los programas de PSA tuvieron impactos positivos significativos sobre las viviendas para aquellos que podían costear participar. Nuestros resultados son congruentes con las teorías de que los PSA, cuando se designan apropiadamente, pueden ser una herramienta poderosa y novedosa para obtener objetivos de conservación mientras se beneficia a la gente local.

Accounting for the impact of conservation on human well-being

Conservationists are increasingly engaging with the concept of human well-being to improve the design and evaluation of their interventions. Since the convening of the influential Sarkozy Commission in 2009, development researchers have been refining conceptualizations and frameworks to understand and measure human well-being and are starting to converge on a common understanding of how best to do this. In conservation, the term human well-being is in widespread use, but there is a need for guidance on operationalizing it to measure the impacts of conservation interventions on people. We present a framework for understanding human well-being, which could be particularly useful in conservation. The framework includes 3 conditions; meeting needs, pursuing goals, and experiencing a satisfactory quality of life. We outline some of the complexities involved in evaluating the well-being effects of conservation interventions, with the understanding that well-being varies between people and over time and with the priorities of the evaluator. Key challenges for research into the well-being impacts of conservation interventions include the need to build up a collection of case studies so as to draw out generalizable lessons; harness the potential of modern technology to support well-being research; and contextualize evaluations of conservation impacts on well-being spatially and temporally within the wider landscape of social change. Pathways through the smog of confusion around the term well-being exist, and existing frameworks such as the Well-being in Developing Countries approach can help conservationists negotiate the challenges of operationalizing the concept. Conservationists have the opportunity to benefit from the recent flurry of research in the development field so as to carry out more nuanced and locally relevant evaluations of the effects of their interventions on human well-being. Consideración del Impacto de la Conservación sobre el Bienestar Humano Resumen Los conservacionistas cada vez más se comprometen con el concepto del bienestar humano para mejorar el diseño y la evaluación de sus intervenciones. Desde la convención de la influyente Comisión Sarkozy en 2009, los investigadores del desarrollo han estado refinando las conceptualizaciones y los marcos de trabajo para entender y medir el bienestar humano y están comenzando a convergir con un entendimiento común de cuál es la mejor forma de hacer esto. En la conservación el término bienestar humano tiene un uso amplio, pero existe la necesidad de la orientación en su operación para medir los impactos de las intervenciones de la conservación sobre la gente. Presentamos un marco de trabajo para entender el bienestar humano que podría ser útil particularmente en la conservación. El marco de trabajo incluye tres condiciones: cumplir con las necesidades, perseguir objetivos y experimentar una calidad satisfactoria de vida. Resumimos algunas de las complejidades involucradas en la evaluación de los efectos del bienestar de las intervenciones de la conservación con el entendimiento de que el bienestar varía entre la gente, en el tiempo y con las prioridades del evaluador. Los retos clave para la investigación de los impactos del bienestar de las intervenciones de la conservación incluyen la necesidad de crear una colección de estudios de caso para trazar lecciones generalizables: hacer uso del potencial de la tecnología moderna para apoyar la investigación del bienestar; y contextualizar espacial y temporalmente las evaluaciones de los impactos de la conservación sobre el bienestar dentro del marco más amplio del cambio social. Existen caminos que atraviesan la confusión que rodea al término bienestar, y los marcos de trabajo existentes, como el del acercamiento de Bienestar en Países en Desarrollo, pueden ayudar a los conservacionistas a negociar los obstáculos de la operación del concepto. Los conservacionistas tienen la oportunidad de beneficiarse del frenesí reciente de investigación en el campo del desarrollo para así realizar evaluaciones más matizadas y relevantes localmente de los efectos de sus intervenciones sobre el bienestar humano.

Guiding principles for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on human well-being.

Measures of socio-economic impacts of conservation interventions have largely been restricted to externally defined indicators focused on income, which do not reflect peoples priorities. Using a holistic, locally grounded conceptualization of human well-being instead provides a way to understand the multi-faceted impacts of conservation on aspects of peoples lives that they value. Conservationists are engaging with well-being for both pragmatic and ethical reasons, yet current guidance on how to operationalize the concept is limited. We present nine guiding principles based around a well-being framework incorporating material, relational and subjective components, and focused on gaining knowledge needed for decision-making. The principles relate to four key components of an impact evaluation: (i) defining well-being indicators, giving primacy to the perceptions of those most impacted by interventions through qualitative research, and considering subjective well-being, which can affect engagement with conservation; (ii) attributing impacts to interventions through quasi-experimental designs, or alternative methods such as theory-based, case study and participatory approaches, depending on the setting and evidence required; (iii) understanding the processes of change including evidence of causal linkages, and consideration of trajectories of change and institutional processes; and (iv) data collection with methods selected and applied with sensitivity to research context, consideration of heterogeneity of impacts along relevant societal divisions, and conducted by evaluators with local expertise and independence from the intervention.

Identifying Conservation Successes, Failures and Future Opportunities; Assessing Recovery Potential of Wild Ungulates and Tigers in Eastern Cambodia

Conservation investment, particularly for charismatic and wide-ranging large mammal species, needs to be evidence-based. Despite the prevalence of this theme within the literature, examples of robust data being generated to guide conservation policy and funding decisions are rare. We present the first published case-study of tiger conservation in Indochina, from a site where an evidence-based approach has been implemented for this iconic predator and its prey. Despite the persistence of extensive areas of habitat, Indochinas tiger and ungulate prey populations are widely supposed to have precipitously declined in recent decades. The Seima Protection Forest (SPF), and broader Eastern Plains Landscape, was identified in 2000 as representing Cambodias best hope for tiger recovery; reflected in its designation as a Global Priority Tiger Conservation Landscape. Since 2005 distance sampling, camera-trapping and detection-dog surveys have been employed to assess the recovery potential of ungulate and tiger populations in SPF. Our results show that while conservation efforts have ensured that small but regionally significant populations of larger ungulates persist, and density trends in smaller ungulates are stable, overall ungulate populations remain well below theoretical carrying capacity. Extensive field surveys failed to yield any evidence of tiger, and we contend that there is no longer a resident population within the SPF. This local extirpation is believed to be primarily attributable to two decades of intensive hunting; but importantly, prey densities are also currently below the level necessary to support a viable tiger population. Based on these results and similar findings from neighbouring sites, Eastern Cambodia does not currently constitute a Tiger Source Site nor meet the criteria of a Global Priority Tiger Landscape. However, SPF retains global importance for many other elements of biodiversity. It retains high regional importance for ungulate populations and potentially in the future for Indochinese tigers, given adequate prey and protection.

Vultures in Cambodia: population, threats and conservation

Summary Asian vultures have undergone dramatic declines of 90–99% in the Indian Subcontinent, as a consequence of poisoning by veterinary use of the drug diclofenac, and are at a high risk of extinction. Cambodia supports one of the only populations of three species (White-rumped Vulture Gyps bengalensis, Slender-billed Vulture G. tenuirostris and Red-headed Vulture Sarcogyps calvus) outside of South Asia where diclofenac use is not widespread. Conservation of the Cambodian sub-populations is therefore a global priority. This study analyses the results of a long-term research programme into Cambodian vultures that was initiated in 2004. Population sizes of each species are estimated at 50–200+ individuals, ranging across an area of approximately 300 km by 250 km, including adjacent areas in Laos and Vietnam. The principal causes of vulture mortality were poisoning (73%), probably as an accidental consequence of local hunting and fishing practices, and hunting or capture for traditional medicine (15%). This represents a significant loss from such a small population of long-lived, slow breeding, species such as vultures. Cambodian vultures are severely food limited and are primarily dependent on domestic ungulate carcasses, as wild ungulate populations have been severely depleted over the past 20 years. Local people across the vulture range still follow traditional animal husbandry practices, including releasing livestock into the open deciduous dipterocarp forest areas when they are not needed for work, providing the food source. Reducing threats through limiting the use of poisons (which are also harmful for human health) and supplementary food provisioning in the short to medium-term through ‘vulture restaurants’ is critical if Cambodian vultures are to be conserved.

Monitoring local well-being in environmental interventions: a consideration of practical trade-offs

Within the field of environmental management and conservation, the concept of well-being is starting to gain traction in monitoring the socio-economic and cultural impact of interventions on local people. Here we consider the practical trade-offs policy makers and practitioners must navigate when utilizing the concept of well-being in environmental interventions. We first review current concepts of well-being before considering the need to balance the complexity and practical applicability of the definition used and to consider both positive and negative components of well-being. A key determinant of how well-being is operationalized is the identity of the organization wishing to monitor it. We describe the trade-offs around the external and internal validity of different approaches to measuring well-being and the relative contributions of qualitative and quantitative information to understanding well-being. We explore how these trade-offs may be decided as a result of a power struggle between stakeholders. Well-being is a complex, multi-dimensional, dynamic concept that cannot be easily defined and measured. Local perspectives are often missed during the project design process as a result of the more powerful voices of national governments and international NGOs, so for equity and local relevance it is important to ensure these perspectives are represented at a high level in project design and implementation.

Status and Conservation of Yellow-Cheeked Crested Gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae) in the Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia

The yellow-cheeked crested gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae) occurs east of the Mekong River in southern Vietnam, northeastern Cambodia, and possibly southernmost Lao PDR (2000, Nomad RSI unpubl. data). The northern distributional limit is unclear as it either borders or intergrades with the southern white-cheeked crested gibbon,N. siki (Duckworth et al. 1995, 1999; Geissmann et al. 2000; Konrad 2004). N. gabriellae is currently listed as Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2008). Little behavioral or ecological work was conducted on the species until recent years; however, a picture of the species is beginning to emerge with current studies, particularly in the SBCA (Rawson 2004) and Ratanakiri province, Cambodia (Traeholt et al. 2006), and Cat Tien National Park (NP) in Vietnam (M. Kenyon pers. comm.). It appears that N. gabriellae generally prefers undisturbed evergreen forest with a reasonably high canopy (Nguyen Xuan Dang and Osborn 2004; Traeholt et al. 2006) although the species inhabits other habitat types such as semi-evergreen, mixed deciduous, and even bamboo forest (M. Kenyon pers. comm., this paper). The species can apparently survive a reasonably high degree of habitat and incidental disturbance, persisting in selectively logged habitats and close to human habitation when not hunted to extirpation (Duckworth et al. 1999; Polet et al. 2004, BMR and TC pers. obs.). It has wide altitudinal limits, occurring from 100 m above sea level (m asl) in Cat Tien NP (Eames and Robson 1993) to above 2000 m asl on the Da Lat plateau, Vietnam (Eames and Nguyen Cu 1994). N. gabriellae, like other gibbon species, is territorial and monogamous (Traeholt et al. 2006), with mated individuals producing loud vocal duets

An apparent hybrid wild bear from Cambodia

Abstract An apparent instance of hybridization in the wild between Ursus thibetanus and U. malayanus is documented via morphological and genetic comparisons.

Five challenges to reconcile agricultural land-use and forest ecosystem services in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia possesses the highest rates of tropical deforestation globally and exceptional levels of species richness and endemism. Many countries in the region are also recognized for their food insecurity and poverty, making the reconciliation of agricultural production and forest conservation a particular priority. This reconciliation requires recognition of the trade-offs between competing land-use values and the subsequent incorporation of this information into policy making. To date, such reconciliation has been relatively unsuccessful across much of Southeast Asia. We propose an ecosystem services (ES) value-internalization framework that identifies the key challenges to such reconciliation. These challenges include lack of accessible ES valuation techniques; limited knowledge of the links between forests, food security, and human well-being; weak demand and political will for the integration of ES in economic activities and environmental regulation; a disconnect between decision makers and ES valuation; and lack of transparent discussion platforms where stakeholders can work toward consensus on negotiated land-use management decisions. Key research priorities to overcome these challenges are developing easy-to-use ES valuation techniques; quantifying links between forests and well-being that go beyond economic values; understanding factors that prevent the incorporation of ES into markets, regulations, and environmental certification schemes; understanding how to integrate ES valuation into policy making processes, and determining how to reduce corruption and power plays in land-use planning processes.